Bhubaneswar: BJD president and Leader of Opposition in the Odisha Assembly Naveen Patnaik on Friday demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and called for a rethink of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of electoral rolls, citing reported differences among members of the Election Commission.
“Because of the strong differences between the various Election Commissioners, the Chief Election Commissioner should immediately resign and the whole SIR process should be thoroughly revisited. The BJD has been against this SIR process from the beginning and we shall take it up very strongly,” Patnaik told reporters outside the Assembly.
His remarks came days after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally raised objections at least 14 times over a period of 10 months to certain decisions and orders concerning the functioning of the Election Commission.
According to the report, the objections related to issues including voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, changes to Form 6 and the management of the electoral-roll database. The two commissioners reportedly said that some decisions or communications issued in the name of the Election Commission were made without their knowledge or approval.
The three-member Election Commission comprises Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The Indian Express report said Sandhu and Joshi had raised concerns over several aspects of the electoral-roll management process, including the functioning of the Commission’s voter database and the manner in which certain decisions were communicated.
The SIR has emerged as a major political issue, with the Election Commission undertaking an exercise to revise electoral rolls across several states and Union Territories. The Indian Express reported that the exercise had resulted in more than 13 crore names being removed from draft rolls across 30 states and Union Territories.
Patnaik also criticised the BJP over the MMDR Act and questioned the support extended to the legislation by the party’s MPs from Odisha.
“As far as the MMDR Act is concerned, why blame others when 20 Lok Sabha MPs from Odisha belonging to the BJP supported this Bill in Parliament? We in the BJD will take this up strongly with the state government and ask it to pause and examine the issue, as this process could lead to a huge loss of revenue for the state,” he said.
Patnaik said the BJD would raise the matter with the Odisha government and seek its intervention over the possible impact of the legislation on the state’s revenue.
The former Odisha chief minister made the remarks while speaking to reporters outside the state Assembly on Friday.
